Mavis`s Latest Album Points In A New Direction

In one sense, Staples is right. Here in her modestly comfortable Chicago apartment of many years, surrounded by pictures of family, large plants and colorful paintings, it`s clear that, no matter how far she and her family, the Staples Singers, have traveled over the last 30 years, and regardless of how far she goes now with the release of her new, Prince-produced solo album, this city has been, and always will be, home.

``We chose to stay in Chicago,`` she says firmly. ``For years, managers and record companies tried to get us to move to California. They felt we would have a better chance of making it. But we were having fun in Chicago. And Chicago had a nice Chi-Town sound. We had people like the Spaniels, the Dells, Curtis Mayfield, Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler. And we weren`t really going for a star thing. Our thoughts were always if we could live comfortably (that was enough). We weren`t trying to get rich. We weren`t going for glitter.``

But ``glitter`` found the Staples and its deep-voiced lead singer and, contrary to her own statement, took them nearly everywhere, including around the world and up the pop and soul charts scores of times.

And with a strong new album that reaffirms her importance as a brilliant and enjoyable singer, Staples could, indeed, be on the way to a ``comeback.`` It has been more than 10 years since her fourth, and last, solo album was released. ``Nobody was asking for Mavis,`` she says with characteristic frankness, until Al Bell, the Stax Records` executive who produced many Staples Singers` hits, offered to sign her to his new label.

``I said, `I don`t care. It can be a new label. As long as the Lord let`s me sing, I`m going to sing my butt off and somebody`s going to hear me.` It was just a matter of a day that Prince`s manager called me. A matter of one day.``

Prince first attempted to reach Staples in the spring of 1987. ``My father called me,`` she says, chuckling, ``and told me, `Mavis, Prince is looking for you.` I said, `Daddy, stop jivin`!```

Then Prince`s manager called to say the same thing.

``Maybe six months passed,`` she continues, ``and my family and I were going to do a dusties (oldies) show and they called and said, `Prince wants to come to meet you at this show.`

``I actually didn`t know he was there until after we had finished singing. I`m going back to the dressing room and here comes Prince. When I saw him, I was just like these kids. I yelled `Yeah!!!` I know I probably scared him.

``He stayed in the dressing room for maybe 45 minutes. I was doing all the yapping and he was just smiling and looking at me and giving me these one, two word answers.

``Daddy said, `Young man, it`s awfully nice of you to come out here to meet Mavis.` And he just told Daddy, `You can play.` That`s all he said to Daddy, `You can play.`

``I thought, `We`ve got to communicate if we`re going to work together.`

So I started writing letters letting him into my life and letting him know the kind of person I was.

``And it got better. I started hearing from him on the telephone. In London (where Staples had been invited to see the beginning of Prince`s Lovesexy tour), I broke in. I couldn`t stop him. Then he would call me and talk and talk.``

The pairing of this gospel pioneer and ``Mr. Dirty Mind`` seems almost unthinkable, yet it turned out to be a musical match made in heaven.

``When I read his lyrics, it comes out beauty,`` Staples says of her controversial producer. ``If there wasn`t beauty in him, he wouldn`t have come this far. I don`t think I would have had any hangups anyhow because I don`t judge people.

``Everybody has their own cross to bear. And he wouldn`t write that for me. When his manager called me, I did ask him, `What would Prince write for me?` It wasn`t because of `dirty` lyrics. It was because of what I heard on Vanity and Apollonia. These were teeny bopper songs to me. I said, `I`m an adult.`

``He said, `That`s what he`ll be writing for you, adult songs with a contemporary background.`

``I said, `All right, we can work.` ``

And work they did, producing some of the most consistently powerful and mature music either has done. ``Time Waits For No One,`` released on Prince`s own Paisley Park label, translates Staples` strong roots in `50s gospel, `60s soul and `70s funk into state-of-the-art `80s music.

Prince wrote or co-wrote six of the eight tracks, served as executive producer, coordinated virtually all the instrumental backing and played on a number of songs.

``He studied Mavis. He didn`t just come in giving me just anything. He took time to consider me and consider where I came from and what I`ve been doing. It would have been disastrous if he hadn`t done that,`` she says.